


Exile

by Ariel_Tempest



Category: Downton Abbey, Faerie Folklore
Genre: Alternate Universe, Changelings, Fae & Fairies, Halloween, Surreal, not what it seems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 04:03:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12573288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariel_Tempest/pseuds/Ariel_Tempest
Summary: Every nine years on Halloween night, Thomas Barrow has a conversation with the person he hates the most: Himself.





	Exile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alchemine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alchemine/gifts).



> Inspired by Alchemine's works involving the fair folk. 
> 
> Additional thanks to my three RL beta reader friends and to the musical artists Leslie Hudson and Heather Dale. Leslie's "The Rift" is my go to Thomas song and both it and Heather's "Changling Child" were my soundtrack while writing this.

_1924_

There were things that, by silent agreement, were not discussed at Downton. The general wetness of the season; the way the cold seeped in everywhere; the plentiful harvest brought in by the tenant farmers, these things were exclaimed over by anyone and everyone in the village. However, if anyone noticed the way the creeping shadows didn’t always follow the paths they should or how there seemed to be an excessive number of crows roosting in the surrounding trees this year; if they thought there was a heavier scent of decay or they could have sworn they heard voices in the woods where no voices should be, no one mentioned it. 

At the big house, it seemed an autumn like any other. The family glided through it with the grace of a mute swan, kept afloat by their own importance and the frantic kicking of the staff. To the staff, at least those indoors, it might as well have been any other season. They saw little of the weather or the trees or the shadows. They saw the harvest only as food to prepare, to serve, or to eat themselves. The garden parties were replaced with shooting, the fine linen suits gave way to warm overcoats, but all in all it made little difference to anyone. Mr. Carson fussed, Mrs. Patmore fussed, and Mrs. Hughes somehow managed to keep the whole affair going without the other two figuring out she was actually the one in charge.

The only peculiarity anyone mentioned was Thomas. The under butler was more than usually quiet, more than usually distracted, and, when he bothered to say anything, more than usually sharp. It was the last bit that everyone noticed, since he was sharp enough on a good day. Mr. Carson took him to task when he snapped at Daisy for not watching where she was going. He took him to task for staring out the window when he was supposed to be waiting on the family’s tea. He took him to task for taking too long to answer when asked what on earth was wrong with him lately. Thomas simply smiled (if the tight turn of his lips could be called that), apologized, and said it must be the weather. Mr. Carson told him to get over it.

He did not get over it. By the final day of October he was so out of sorts, Mr. Carson ordered him to take his half day and march himself down to the village so Dr. Clarkson could look at him. He obeyed, although it did little good in the end. With no symptoms beyond restlessness and unease it was impossible to make a diagnosis. The possibility that it was a delayed reaction from his medical treatment earlier in the year was raised, examined, and discarded (although it was observed that Mr. Carson hadn’t sent Thomas to the doctor for the previous issue, despite the fact that he’d looked like death. This surprised the doctor more than it did Thomas. After all, that hadn’t impacted his ability to work). At the end of the visit, all Dr. Clarkson could do was advise rest, relaxation, perhaps some tea, and prescribe a bottle of sleeping medicine.

Sunset found Thomas leaning against the yard wall up at the big house, cigarette mostly ignored in his fingers, staring out at the woods. There was the tell-tale protest of hinges that needed oiling as the door from the servant’s hall opened and another as it closed. He idly noted that he should tell Mr. Carson about that, or even see to it himself. He didn’t feel like it, and therefore wouldn’t, but he should. He noted the light tread on the stones, the space of the steps, and was generally not at all surprised when Mrs. Baxter’s voice asked, “Was doctor Clarkson able to help?”

“Not really,” he replied, his eyes still fixed on the tree line. From a distance the limbs were full of living shadows. The crows had come in to roost. There were so many of them that the trees might as well have had feathers instead of leaves. The noise was loud enough it could have been coming from the roof tops rather than the woods. “Told me to relax. Gave me something to help me sleep. Beyond that,” he shrugged, “there doesn’t seem to be anything to fix.” He looked over and found her frowning.

“But there has to be something,” she insisted softly, reaching up to feel his forehead. He neatly avoided the contact. “You’ve not been at all yourself, lately.”

“What, you mean I’m not nasty enough?” he asked, returning his attention to the woods. He remembered to take a drag off his cigarette only to find it was too far gone to bother with. He dropped it and lit another. “Not certain the others agree with you there.”

She watched him close the lighter and tuck it away. “You’ve been dreadful,” she allowed. Anyone else would have been angry with him, but she just sounded more worried. “Worse, you’re unfocused. You never have problems paying attention, Thomas. Usually you pay more attention than you should.”

The last observation earned her a wry chuckle. For a moment, it seemed like that was all it was going to earn her, that Thomas was simply going to stand and smoke and stare off into the distance and ignore her completely. Then, in a moment of surprising candidacy, he said, “I’m just restless, that’s all. It feels like I’m about to remember something, something important. Something that will change everything.”

“How?” Her face crumpled further, his words and odd tone anything but reassuring.

“I have no idea,” he announced, then turned a bemused smile at her. “I haven’t remembered it yet.”

For a moment her dark, worried eyes searched his face, clearly trying to decide if he was joking. Finally she sighed and shook her head. “Well, don’t stay out too late. Mr. Carson might accidentally lock you out.”

“Carson might do that on purpose,” Thomas snorted lightly, then waved her off. “Don’t worry about me. Get inside yourself, it’s starting to get cold. I’ll be along.” He watched her in his peripheral vision. It took several heartbeats, but she finally turned and walked away. The hinges creaked, creaked again, and he was alone except for the distant crows.

He turned his attention back to the woods.

The twilight deepened and the murder settled in for sleep, their raucous calls giving way to night breezes. The barest sliver of a moon edged its way above the trees; the stars gave more light. As the wind picked up, any semblance of warmth leached from the world. The knife edge of cold on that wind promised a thick frost in the morning and possibly ice where the earlier rains had left puddles. Thomas pulled his coat closer around himself, lit another cigarette, and kept his eyes locked on the darkness. 

Near midnight, the door opened and the Bateses stepped out, arm-in-arm. Thomas slid silently into the surrounding shadows and went unnoticed. Not long after, Mr. Carson stuck his head out the door. “Thomas?” he called. “Thomas, are you still out here? I’m locking up.” Thomas held his breath, ignoring the small voice in the back of his mind that insisted he correct the older man. After all, he’d been Mr. Barrow for years. If Mr. Carson didn’t care to get it right half of the time, correcting him now wasn’t going to do any good. The butler drew back into the house, shutting the door behind him. There was a barely audible click as the key turned in the door, leaving Thomas free to breathe again. Another night he’d have worried about how he was going to make it back inside, when he finally felt like going, but he somehow knew he’d manage tonight, much the same way he knew that if he just waited, he would remember why he was waiting in the first place.

It was midnight when the light appeared. It appeared suddenly, as if someone had struck a match or a lighter and held it up for him to see. It burned a cold, hard blue and hovered eye level off the ground. 

“About time,” Thomas muttered, pushing away from the wall and striking out across the lawn toward the trees. He ducked his head into his coat collar as protection from the wind. The light didn’t waver, waiting for him with the same silent courtesy he’d waited for it. It was only when he was a half dozen steps or so from the woods that it started to move, retreating, lighting the way between the trees.

Thomas followed, unhurried and unquestioning. He didn’t quite know where he was being taken just yet, but he knew it was safe to follow the light. For someone else, it would have meant death, but the light obeyed him. It felt as if he were dreaming. He hadn’t remembered anything yet, not really, but he recognized things for what they were when he saw them and was not surprised. He was not surprised by the light. He was not surprised when there was a buffet of air and the sound of wings and something large and dark landed on his shoulder. He was not surprised when the something spoke in his ear, “Good evening, Your Highness.” 

He smiled, turning his head just enough to meet the black eyes of the bird on his shoulder. “Evening? It’s midnight. Shouldn’t you be asleep with the other crows?”

The bird cocked its head at him. “As if I’d keep mortal hours in any form.” It clacked its beak in amusement. “Although I suppose it would be proper for me to get down and offer you a ride, wouldn’t it?”

“No need,” Thomas replied, raising one hand to scratch the feathers at the bird’s neck. He turned his attention back to the retreating light. “I am perfectly capable of walking.”

The two of them settled into silence. For a moment, Thomas did remember something, although it was a very ordinary memory. He remembered coming into the woods in the dark and the cold shortly before Christmas, years prior, pretending to search for Isis. It seemed much the same now, even without Mr. Carson and his Lordship and the dog locked in the shed. He really hadn’t meant to leave her there overnight, he thought idly, as if it would make a difference to someone - maybe the crow, maybe the light. It was only supposed to be a few hours and then back into the warmth of the abbey. But, as with so many of his plans, that one had gone quite awry.

He frowned. There was something fundamentally wrong about that. His plans shouldn’t have ever gone awry. He should have been the one leading O’Brien, not the other way around. He was the clever one. He should never have had to rely on Baxter for information. He was the fly on the wall. 

What had gone wrong?

The jittery feeling grew worse. It wasn’t nervousness, more an eager anticipation underlaid by a building irritation, although he couldn’t say what for. The shadows clung to his footsteps as he walked, stretching out behind him until he was wearing a cape of darkness. His eyes reflected the light he followed, giving them a wild intensity. His head, always held with the excellent posture required of a footman, notched upward with the same inherent pride as Lady Mary. 

He was superior.

Superior to whom?

Superior to the crow on his shoulder, his mind told him. Superior to the light he was following. Superior to everything in the forest, to everyone behind him, and to the person who waited for him at the heart of the woods. That last thought, unbidden and unexpected, made his pride prickle. His hands clenched and loosened as he wound his way through the trees and the shadows. He did not look down at the path before him. He did not trip on roots and brambles and fallen branches. He was not the scared, stupid boy he’d been all of those years ago (he should not have been stupid then) and was completely certain of his step.

In the dark, time had no meaning. It could have been a minute or a week before a light appeared before him in the trees, much like the one he followed, only stronger and brighter. He lengthened his stride, no longer following his guide, but striking out on his own. The little light sped ahead of him, racing to stay in the lead until it swerved around a large oak and disappeared into the larger light.

As he followed around the tree, Thomas knew what he was going to find before he saw it. With those last few steps, the veil fell away completely and he remembered.

“Hello, Mr. Barrow.”

There was a boy waiting for him. A boy of no more than nine, with pale skin and eyes contrasting with black hair. He stood in a small clearing, ringed in tightly with trees. The trees were lined with toadstools, popping up between the roots and lit with countless, floating balls of light. Despite the fact it was too bright for any shadows, the entire scene felt overlaid by them, as if the light was an illusion.

Thomas sneered down at the boy, his eyes hooded, and he pulled out his cigarettes as if he knew it was against the rules but was daring someone to stop him. “Your Highness,” he said, before he put a fag in his mouth and lit it, cupping the flame with his hand even though there was no rain or wind.

“That title does not belong to me,” the boy demurred, dropping his eyes briefly. “No more than any of the Queen’s vassals. I am simply Thomas.”

“Hardly fair,” the older Thomas noted, blowing a plume of smoke into the air. “Only seems right that one of us should get to be a prince, instead of both being stuck as servants.”

The boy hesitated, eying him the way one might eye a strange dog, trying to decide whether it is aggressive or not. “That is true,” he allowed. “But it also easily enough accomplished. Your Mother, the Queen, she wonders how long you plan to stay in the mortal world?”

Thomas’s eyebrows arched upward and he gave a humorless little laugh. “How long? Well, until I’m free to leave, I suppose. It’s looking like that will be when my mortal form is expected to die of old age, so give it another four or five decades. Unless, of course, something actually kills me.” He held up his injured hand. There was a temptation to remove the glove, but he remembered showing the boy last time they met, nine years previous, so he knew it would have no shock value now. “Fortunately humans are using progressively less iron in their weapons, so that’s not as likely as it used to be.”

The biting edge to his voice made both the bird on his shoulder and the boy in front of him shift uncomfortably. The boy’s pale eyes shifted, meeting the bird’s, his expression imploring. Thomas stood silently, blowing more smoke into the air as he waited for one or the other of them to speak. Finally the bird seemed to take pity, or perhaps he decided he’d have a better chance of getting the desired response. “I mean no impertinence, Your Highness,” he said, his voice low and coaxing, closer to a cat’s purr than the croak one might have expected. The claim made Thomas chuckle. Impertinence had never bothered either of them in the past. “But it has been decades already. You’ve never been gone this long before and the Queen wonders why you’ve not found your way free yet. Time past you’d have been home in-”

“A week, yes, I know,” Thomas cut him off, turning his head just far enough to see black feathers in his periphery. “But that was back when people believed in us, wasn’t it? Back when they hung iron over the cradles. No one does that anymore. No one brews eggshells, hoping I’ll leave and their wee ones will be returned to them.” He fastened a hard look at the boy in front of him. “Not that this one’s mother would have bothered anyway. She’d have been right happy if she’d had one less mouth to feed, I’m sure. But unless I’m found out, I’m bound. Mother knows that. She knew when she decided she wanted her new pet.” He gestured and the boy took a step back, wrapping his arms around himself and dropping his eyes again. “She knew when she decided it had to be me, always me!, to live his life in his place. And she knew things were changing.” His voice raised, anger coursing through and around the words. “They’ve been changing for centuries. Each time I’m gone longer than the last and each time I hear the same song when I come home. ‘Where have you been? What took so long? I’ve been waiting’.”

“She misses you, Your Highness,” the boy offered, peering up at the man in front of him - the man he would have been, if he’d grown up - with a tentative smile. 

It didn’t work. With a crack of irate laughter, Thomas stepped forward into the circle of toadstools. The dancing lights darted away from the sharp smelling smoke of his cigarette. The boy took several hurried steps backward, away from him. “Misses me?” Thomas spat the words, as if he was trying to rid himself of the taste. “She doesn’t miss me. If she missed me, she’d have sent someone else to take your place, to live the hell that was supposed to be your life while you sit here, petted and pampered, never knowing what age is or illness or war. No one dares speak against you, do they? Not even Father’s court would dream of doing more than tangle your shoe laces, not while you have her favor. Meanwhile the whole mortal world sees fit to spit in my face, to try and grind me into the dirt. It’s not all bad, though.” His lips curled in mock good humor. “At least I don’t remember anymore, when I’m out there. That’s not like the old days either, when I’d lay in a cradle knowing full well who I was and where I’d come from. Now I might as well be mortal nine years at a stretch. I don’t remember where I’m from. I don’t remember that there’s not only one, but two worlds that have cast me out.” He raised his hand again, examining it as if he could see through the leather. “But when I’m here, when it’s all over and I come trotting back like Mother wants, I’ll remember everything. Every time I’ve been sent out to gather a new toy for her pleasure, every sting of every word, the degradation of years cleaning chamber pots and polishing silver. The scars will go away, but I’ll remember what it felt like to be kicked, to be beaten, to be shot.” He looked back down. “Every miserable life that someone else has been spared.”

The boy backed slowly away, mouth opening as if to protest, then closing as he clearly failed to find the words he wanted. It was oddly maddening. 

With a snarl and a lunge that took the crow by surprise and sent it winging from his shoulder in alarm, Thomas lunged and grabbed the boy by the throat, lifting him into the air and slamming him against a tree. “If Mother misses me so much, why doesn’t she come herself?” he screamed, the last of his temper shattering, scattering the glowing lights and letting the shadows into the ring. “Why does Father stay away? Because she claimed me?” The boy struggled to answer, but Thomas didn’t want to hear it. His questions were entirely wrath and rhetoric. “Their Majesties do not care and you are the proof! Every time, it’s you!”

Arms reached around him from behind, one settling around his waist, one reaching out and clamping a hand around his. “Don’t, Your Highness,” the crow’s voice implored in his ear, although it was not a beak that brushed against his ear now. “The Queen will never forgive you if you harm him.”

“I don’t care if she forgives me,” Thomas replied. Nonetheless, his grip loosened and he let the boy drop to the ground. “Her forgiveness means nothing. But don’t worry,” he turned again, fully this time, working himself free of the entangling arms. The man who stood behind him could have been made of shadow, his skin, hair, and clothing all the colour of the crow’s feathers. Thomas met his dark eyes and smiled a cold, nasty smile. “Don’t worry, I’d never do him lasting harm. I want him to live, live long enough to fall from her favor. To know what it feels like to have her cast you out.” He half turned back to the boy behind him. “Although I’m sure by the time she does, you won’t have to worry about aging, when you leave. You’ll step back into the mortal world and turn to dust as you stand, most likely.”

“And will watching that finally make you happy?” the boy whispered. 

Thomas shrugged. “I won’t be there, will I?” He looked around the glen. “Mother doesn’t want me. Father doesn’t care. And I’m tired of being cast out. Cast out of this world. Cast out of that one. There are other worlds, you know.” He gave the boy the most genuine smile he’d worn in weeks. If he was unlucky, they’d only have to go through this four or five more times before his mortal form was deemed old enough to die. If he was lucky, he’d be kicked in the head by a horse or something and they need never do it again. He would be free to do as he pleased and this time, this time he would not be ordered back to his Mother’s court. “If these worlds don’t want me, I’ll find one that does, and Mother can cry her crocodile tears until they flood the land for all I care.”

“What of me, Your Highness?” the dark man asked, his voice a whisper of a whisper. There was a note in it that Thomas knew well, the cry of a faithful heart that had been cast aside. In the morning light he wouldn’t recognize the crow, the black horse in the field, the stray black dog following him through the streets as the same creature, but standing there, remembering everything, he knew. He wasn’t the only one who had left the immortal world for the mortal one.

He was grateful.

“You will come and go as you will, as always,” he replied, just as softly, lifting the back of his hand to trace down the other’s face. “And I will welcome you, if you wish to follow me. But I will not return where I am not wanted. Not for anyone.”

“What if, in nine years time, the Queen comes in my place?” the boy asked, his voice sick and defeated. “Or the King? Will that change your mind?”

“Perhaps,” Thomas shrugged again. “Perhaps not. Either way, I’ve no more to say to you.” He gave the boy who was Thomas Barrow a last, dismissive glance. “And so this conversation is over.” Without a backward glance, he turned and walked out of the clearing. The lights stayed where they were, not one rushing to light his way out of the woods. Behind him, the boy slipped away, stepping over the mushrooms and vanishing as if the thin air was actually a hallway and he’d turned a corner. The tall, dark figure stood longer, watching until Thomas’s footsteps faded, and then he shrank, his arms growing shorter, his legs and ears growing long until there was a black hare in his place. It listened awhile more, then turned and hopped into the shadows.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Before people start commenting, a quick note:
> 
> Since two of my three beta readers called me out on my use of an exclamation mark in a parenthetical statement delineated by commas rather than parenthesis or em dashes (and the third reader was warned in advance), I should probably just say point blank that I don't know which grammarian between 1911 and present day decided that was no longer going to be an acceptable grammatical structure, but I don't agree with the decision. I don't respect the decision. Since it can no longer affect my GPA, I refuse to recognize the decision. End story.


End file.
